Why some use drugs and steal: How addiction works

Angela Harrington asked herself one day, how come she was telling her son to get clean when she was not doing it herself.

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Angela Harrington, 64, speaks with her son, Daniel "DJ" William Harrington, 33, who is an inmate at the Shasta County Jail. Both are addicted to drugs but have gotten clean and want to stay that way. Daniel Harrington will enter a residential rehab program upon leaving jail.(Photo: Greg Barnette/Record Searchlight)Buy Photo

Daniel William “DJ” Harrington is sitting on a bolted, metallic stool when he speaks with his mom — he’s been off drugs for about two months and wants to get into treatment.

Though only a few inches of glass separate them on a Sunday morning during a visit at Shasta County Jail, they seemingly couldn't be further apart. At 33, he's sometimes homeless and has two children he doesn't see. He's in jail for violating his probation. Angela Harrington, 64, is retired and married. She doesn't have a criminal record and has always paid her bills.

But they share an addiction to opiates — his is to heroin, hers is to prescription painkillers. She has been sober since April 5, two days after another jail visit in which she urged her son to get help while high herself and five days after she tried to take her life, she said.

She was in a dark place, desperate for a way out.

"I was like, 'How dare you tell him he knows what to do and you're still using?'" she said of that night. "I was crying and crying and looking at myself, 'Why haven't you stopped?'"

“"I always thought in the back of my mind, 'What am I doing?'"”

Daniel Harrington, addicted to heroin

Sobbing, she told her husband about the jail visit and the one time she and her son used heroin together. He took her to Right Road Recovery Programs in Anderson.

Right Road and other Shasta County treatment centers said they've seen enrollment skyrocket for heroin in recent years, with more clients resembling Angela Harrington — people without criminal records, housed and employed.

She and her son also now share a desire to stay clean. But even after two sober months in custody, DJ Harrington worries he'll go to a dealer upon release if he doesn't get right into treatment.

“That’s why we say (drug problems have) a neurological basis, and why they’re so easily confused with moral failing, because it eventually impacts the higher functions (of the brain),” said Ruben Baler, a health science officer with the National institutes on Drug Abuse. "That’s why the threat of going to jail or losing their kids no longer holds any sway. They don’t process information the way a normal brain does any more."

Addiction, science has found, is full of surprises — and bitter irony.

This photo shows the cycle of addiction: The drugs send the reward center, aka basal ganglia, into overdrive. When the drugs wear off, the extended amygdala throws them into withdrawal with constant feelings of anxiety and hopelessness. Driven by those emotions and weakened by the repeated drug use, the prefrontal cortex, which handles self control and judgement, focuses instead on finding more drugs.(Photo: Office of the US Surgeon General)

The binge

For Angela, addiction started when her mother gave her cigarettes, drank booze with her and later supplied speed to make her work harder at her mom's workplace. For DJ, it began with sneaking his parent's Black Velvet whisky and weed as a preteen. By his early teens, he'd moved onto harder drugs, he said.

The reward circuitry reinforces very basic survival skills such as feeling satisfied after eating, Baler said. Drugs send it into overdrive.

But the advanced brain, which controls higher thinking and checks those impulses, is still developing into the early 20s, Baler said.

Repeated drug use slowly trains the primal brain to crave drugs and only drugs. It also weakens the advanced brain's control and its understanding of long-term consequences, such as jail time, Baler said.

Redding police Lt. Jeff Wallace said custody provides time for them to sober up, secluded from the community they've victimized.

“That’s why the threat of going to jail or losing their kids no longer holds any sway. They don’t process information the way a normal brain does”

Ruben Baler, health scientist with NIDA

Indeed, DJ Harrington said jail forced him to sober up, though he worries about using after he leaves Oct. 29.

Taking drugs away doesn't undo addiction's extensive rewiring of the brain to seek drugs, Baler said. Eventually the advanced brain begins excusing, then justifying and finally enabling the drug problem, according to the Surgeon General report.

DJ Harrington said he loved the rush from stealing. But he also told himself he was ripping off some faceless corporation, such as when he stole a Honda generator from the Walmart in Red Bluff, even as employees chased him.

"I thought, 'I'm not at someone's house stealing,'" he said. "I'm not stealing from friends and loved ones."

When DJ Harrington entered treatment at Right Road several years ago, Angela Harrington sat in on a few group sessions with him. Surrounded by addiction, she told herself she wasn't one of them. They were apathetic or nodding off even as their lives lay in shambles, she said.

She didn't steal, she said. She paid her bills first and sometimes sold extra medication to pay for her habit. She doesn't have any criminal cases in the Shasta County Superior Court's electronic records.

Among both 2007 and 2016 overdose victims in Shasta County, about 40 percent had criminal records, according to a Record Searchlight analysis of coroner reports and Superior Court records.

Angela Harrington, 64, takes a walk in her neighborhood, one of the ways she's learned to deal with stress without drugs.(Photo: Greg Barnette/Record Searchlight)

Genes and ACES

Genes affect a person's vulnerability to addiction. But research has found certain aspects of childhood, such as growing up around drugs or with verbal abuse, are closely tied to higher chances of risky behaviors to numb the pain, Baler said. One study found each factor raises the risk of addiction two- to four-fold.

Shasta County adults reported those experiences at levels two- to three-times their fellow Californians, according to a 2012 Shasta County Health and Human Services Agency survey. It found 58 percent grew up with substance abuse in their childhood homes and 55 percent with verbal abuse.

Almost 40 percent experienced four or more such factors, compared with California's 17 percent.

Baler cautioned that risk factors don't equal destiny — some drugs, including legal ones, are more addictive than others.

"Of all those who are exposed to a drug of abuse, either a few times or repeatedly, it's only a minority who become addicted," Baler said.

Most of the women fleeing domestic violence at One SAFE Place's Sierra Center come with many of those negative childhood experiences and often addiction, said Mare Deutcher, case manager in residence at the shelter.

"I've seen a lot of people come in with (prescription) medications, an amazing amount of opioid medications, methamphetamine, heroin," she said. "Stress in relationships leads to more cravings, which lead to more use."

That's why early intervention programs, such as OSP's summer camp for child victims of violence, are so important, Deutcher said. They teach kids positive ways to deal with pain before it can lead to addiction.

Redding pain and addiction specialist Dr. Leonard Soloniuk said those in the throes of addiction “stop maturing.” The drugs come to feel as “necessary as breathing,” said Dr. Theodore “Thad” Workman, Soloniuk’s colleague.

In Soloniuk's survey of 119 patients, almost all addictions began in the teens with prescription painkillers. Most had first tried alcohol or pot.

Addiction is also a spectrum, Soloniuk said. Some have a mild case while others are functioning addicts like Angela Harrington. Some have lost everything, including family, like DJ Harrington.

This image contrasts the levels of dopamine, aka the feel-good neurotransmitter, in the brain of a healthy adult (left) with that of someone who is addicted to cocaine. The center one is after one month of sobriety and the right one is four months after quitting. Lower levels of dopamine make it much more difficult for a person to feel positive emotions, according to the Office of U.S. Surgeon General. It can take months or years before the brain of someone in recovery returns to normal levels, which means months or years of stronger negative emotions and weaker positive ones. That contributes to the chances of relapse, according to the office.(Photo: Office of the U.S. Surgeon General)

The withdrawal

About 60 percent to 70 percent of those who are addicted also have a mental illness they're trying to treat, Baler said.

“If (they have) anxiety or panic attacks, they may gravitate toward downers. If they suffer from depression or stress, you may want something to bring you up,” Baler said.

Angela Harrington said she has been treated for anxiety, though she told her doctor recently she didn't feel any. Her son has been diagnosed with ADHD. She preferred prescription painkillers but would get high on other medications.

In addition, when the drugs wear off, the primal brain uses fear to scream for more, Baler said.

Angela and DJ Harrington said the present need for drugs overwhelmed everything else.

“"You need to be around the right people. You have to really change your life, and you have to get excited about your life,"”

Angela Harrington on succeeding in recovery.

"It's so sad, isn't it? But then I look at what my mother did to me, and I swore I'd never do that to my kids," she said.

When she tried to quit cold turkey, Angela Harrington said she'd last a few days or weeks.

"Many nights, I'd be sitting there and (thinking about) all the terrible things I've done or said," she said. But she'd feel hopeless and doomed to fail. It had driven her four times to overdose or even slash her wrists, she said.

DJ Harrington said he received medication during his first attempt at treatment. But he sold it and still got high, he said.

They said previous attempts didn't work because they weren't ready to admit their addictions and to quit, both mother and son said.

Nothing could have convinced DJ Harrington to seek therapy when he wasn't ready — his daily focus was only drugs, even though he knew he should stop, he said.

"I always thought in the back of my mind, 'What am I doing?'" he said.

When addicts are ready to quite, they need immediate access to medication and counseling before they cycle back into hopelessness — and use drugs to escape it, NIDA's Baler said.

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Addiction, science has found, is full of surprises — and bitter irony.
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Relapse

The brain can take months or years to recover as the primal brain slowly relearns how to regulate emotions absent drugs. It takes far longer than the agonizing physical withdrawal, Baler said.

That's because counseling can't erase addiction's lessons that drugs equal relief, he said. But treatment can teach those with addiction new, healthy stress relievers as well as warn of the roads to relapse.

Angela spoke of wanting to live a fuller life. She is eating healthier and paying attention to what her body is telling her. Her rekindled faith also grounds her. She reads the serenity prayer, her Narcotics Anonymous books and any piece of literature she can get her hands on.

"You need to be around the right people. You have to really change your life, and you have to get excited about your life," she said.

The suboxone she takes calms that primal brain's scream, allowing her to focus on recovery and learn tools to avoid relapse, she said.

Those include understanding how tiny things can trigger a craving, such as a memory, she said. One time she made a quick jaunt to a neighbor's home for a cigarette. As she reached the door, she recalled they'd used drugs together — and thus it could trigger a relapse, she said.

“"I've learned that there is still hope for him."”

Angela Harrington on her son's recovery.

After DJ Harrington was released from 18 months in prison about seven years ago, a night at the bar turned into a relapse, he said. Another time, it was an old friend with Xanax, he said.

About 60 percent of addicts relapse in the first year of recovery, the surgeon general report said.

But relapse isn't a moral failure, Baler said. Instead, it's a reminder that addiction is a long-term disease and thus treatment is still needed, he said.

After visiting her son at Shasta County Jail in August, Angela Harrington leaves with a smile on her face.

DJ Harrington is entering a residential rehab program after his sentence is up, she said.

"I've learned that there is still hope for him," she said.

Angela Harrington hasn't used since her husband, who would replace the drugs hidden in her socks with pebbles, drove her to get help.

Recovery is a long road, Baler said. But the sooner addiction's stigma is removed, the sooner those with addiction will seek treatment.